Many fascinating analyses (e.g., here) have started to better understand the underlying causes of “the great attrition” — i.e., workers quitting their jobs in record numbers. Most recently, a comprehensive survey by McKinsey suggested that the phenomenon is fairly global, far from over, and has its roots in both behavioural…

[Note: since Medium doesn’t allow a sufficiently high-resolution picture to be uploaded, I’ve also provided a PDF file (which one can zoom into) here.] UK’s annualised inflation rates hit another high in September 2022, as CPI (the consumer price index) increased by 10.1% and CPIH (a broader measure of inflation…

The more I listen to commentary on UK GDP figures, the more convinced I am that, to make more sense of them, we need to delve beyond the headline aggregates. I have previously suggested that it is useful to analyse private and public sector output separately. In this blog, I…

The most important thing to say about the UK’s economic outlook is that it remains extraordinarily uncertain. Nevertheless, the latest news on inflation and real output are — while perhaps expected — concerning. The challenge with official statistics, however, is that they are published several weeks after the event. In…

I like a #dataisbeautiful chart that tells a story, and this one is unequivocal. The chart shows how economic forecasts (for GDP, in the top row, and inflation, in the bottom row) for 2022 (left column) and 2023 (right column) have changed as forecasters have updated their predictions each month…

Inspired by a flurry of interesting new research on working from home (see below), I couldn’t resist looking at the data myself. In the UK, the Understanding Society survey* has been asking people about their experiences throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, and I was curious to find out what this might…

The role of capital in enhancing labour productivity — the output delivered by each worker per hour worked — is a core feature of how economists think about, and model, growth. “Capital” in this context means tangible or intangible things that a society, economy, an organisation or a person has…

As households start to feel the impacts of consumer price increases on their financial resilience, inflation is also squeezing businesses’ profit margins. The ONS’s most recent “Business insights and impact on the UK economy” contains some interesting data on how companies are dealing with increasing input costs. Across all sectors…

As the UK population contemplates the implications of the cost of living crisis, the latest ONS data on households’ financial resilience provides useful insights into who is being most affected. One of the standard questions asked in the Opinions and Lifestyle Survey is a particularly relevant benchmark, as it reflects…